Baton Rouge...

We made an unexpected trip to Baton Rouge last weekend. My precious NaNan (my godmother) passed away last week and the funeral was on Saturday. And while this was obviously not the reason anyone wants to travel and see family, it is always a wonderful trip to my second home. 

My parents were born and raised in Baton Rouge - in fact, I am the only "true Texan" (meaning I was born here) on either side of my family - a fact I am clearly happy to brag about. ;)

They moved to Waco when my mom was pregnant with me and have been there ever since. And while I am thankful each and every day of my life for my friends and hometown experiences, my brothers and I often wonder what it would have been like to grow up surrounded by all of our cousins. 

I know a few things - it would have been loud. crazy. and fun. 

:)

We did get to visit as often as we liked, spending weeks at a time in Baton Rouge growing up. Jeremy would stay the whole summer it seemed. I have such great memories of those visits - some of the most fun surrounding this giant magnolia tree in MaMaw and PaPaw's backyard. 

We spent hours climbing that tree. 

Hours. 

And while it's short a few branches and it's growing old - I think she still has some years left in here for some other little ones I know to make memories of their own. 

Emersyn could not wait to get up there and then her face was like "whoa...what did I do?"

Radley was very brave and climbed up a few more branches with Uncle Pete. 

Emmy was then just content looking cute. 

And then Pete showed us that he "still had it" and climbed all the way to the top. He quickly realized that it was the coming down part that was always harder - especially with 20+ years to account for. 

NaNan had 22 grandchildren, which are all of our 3rd cousins (my parents are 1st cousins with her children). They range in age from 24 to 2. One of my cousins has 7 children, another has 6, another 5, another 3, and another 1 and it was so fun to watch them all play and just love each other.

Radley was into hanging out with his "brothers" - they even taught him how to play hide and seek - in cars. Parked on the street. Awesome, huh? ;)

For a split second I was taking it all in and thought, "we could totally have 5 or 6 kids" and then, well, I came to my senses and decided that 3 sounds good to me.